Back in the mists of time (or 2022 to be precise), TVBEurope spoke to Dean Locke, director of broadcast and media at Formula One about the sport’s move to remote production and its plans to start using the cloud to distribute feeds to broadcasters. Race forward to 2024, and we caught up with him again at this year’s British Grand Prix.
The broadcast team at Formula One have worked with Amazon Web Services (AWS) for a number of years to develop many of their remote workflows, including distributing F1 TV via the cloud. F1 TV is now a fully cloud delivery, with the sport’s onboard camera channels as well as extra content channels also delivered via the cloud. For rights holders the days of providing a traditional clean and dirty feed are gone, says Locke.
“Our broadcasters seem to want 30 different flavours of everything and different content,” he adds. “So, we are definitely using cloud infrastructure for delivering all those feeds and that’s easy to spin up quickly. I still think the broadcast industry loves a satellite and it’s still relatively easy to do that so we provide a mix of media delivery.”
Locke says that in terms of production, the sport is now fully remote with much of the team based at its media centre in Biggin Hill. However, there are still some roles that require a presence at the track, including the disaster recovery team. “Fundamentally we could probably move all those people back to Biggin Hill but, we would then have a zero disaster recovery at site, which would be a worry for a live sporting event,” states Locke.
“There are quite a lot of things on site that become very tangible,” he continues. “Our directors don’t sit around doing nothing. They direct podiums, and that’s because they can go look at the podium, have a chat with the RF camera operators and make some decisions.”
However, Formula One has looked at moving its camera operations to a remote workflow. In 2015 it carried out a test on the Brazilian Grand Prix, with the cameras operated from Biggin Hill. “There was like a second delay, but the operator got used to it quite quickly. I think remote cameras work. I was asked recently about the cable camera that we run down the pit lane. We could do that from Biggin Hill. But the two people who operate it also rig it. So we can take everyone back [to Biggin Hill] but then there’s no one here to actually do anything.”
With the move to remote, Formula One has drastically reduced its travel footprint. “I think we’ve saved something like 130 individual return flights since the beginning of 2024, but you’ve still got presenters and camera operators on site,” reveals Locke. “I like to mix both actually, I do like going home at night. It’s something a lot of sports and other broadcasters are coming up against. Who goes to site and who doesn’t? We are finding people don’t want to travel a lot. We are 24 events around the world and it is pretty hardcore travelling.”
To find the right balance, each member of the team travels to six races a year. But Locke admits he worries that some teams might feel a long way from the action. “I sometimes fear graphics feel very remote from the event. Graphics operators are looking at screens for eight hours through the night when they’re working on the sunny Melbourne race. I’m not sure that’s great for your health.
“We’ve brought a DR graphics person on site and we’re rotating that role because I do feel that they sometimes feel quite distanced from the event. I’ve encouraged a bit of a rotation in some of these roles so that the team actually understand the logistics of a racetrack and the sport.”
Read more of Dean Locke’s thoughts on the use of artificial intelligence, and plans for Formula One’s 2025 season in the September issue of TVBEurope.
